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Review | Wuhan Diary: Chinese writer Fang Fang’s nuanced, personal account of life under quarantine
- Fang Fang documents confusing, conflicting and distressing circumstances in real time
- The book collects 60 social media posts, written daily during the world’s strictest Covid-19 lockdown
Reading Time:4 minutes
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Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City
by Fang Fang (translated by Michael Berry)
Harper Collins
4/5 stars
Wuhan Diary, or at least its recent English translation, is a work whose reputation precedes it.
Its author, a 65-year-old award-winning writer known as Fang Fang, was targeted with online trolling and state censorship after she began posting about the coronavirus outbreak on her personal Weibo account.
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Outrage grew in April after Harper Collins began marketing an English-language compilation of her posts, to be published in book form in June. Fang Fang was accused of casting the nation’s coronavirus response in a poor light.
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This is unfortunate because it distracts from what is a nuanced, personal and humane account of life under quarantine. What began as an extended essay has been turned into a political football – and the insights of Fang Fang’s writing have been lost in the fray.
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